Quantifying carbon fluxes from primary production to mesopelagic fish using a simple food web model

An ecosystem-based flow analysis model was used to study carbon transfer from primary production (PP) to mesopelagic fish via three groups of copepods: detritivores that access sinking particles, vertical migrators, and species that reside in the surface ocean. The model was parameterized for 40°S to 40°N in the world ocean such that results can be compared with recent estimates of mesopelagic fish biomass in this latitudinal range, based on field studies using acoustic technologies, of ∼13 Gt (wet weight). Mesopelagic fish production was predicted to be 0.32% of PP which, assuming fish longevity of 1.5 years, gives rise to predicted mesopelagic fish biomass of 2.4 Gt. Model ensembles were run to analyse the uncertainty of this estimate, with results showing predicted biomass >10 Gt in only 8% of the simulations. The work emphasizes the importance of migrating animals in transferring carbon from the surface ocean to the mesopelagic zone. It also highlights how little is known about the physiological ecology of mesopelagic fish, trophic pathways within the mesopelagic food web, and how these link to PP in the surface ocean. A deeper understanding of these interacting factors is required before the potential for utilizing mesopelagic fish as a harvestable resource can be robustly assessed

Links between surface productivity and deep ocean particle flux at the Porcupine Abyssal Plain sustained observatory

In this study we present hydrography, biogeochemistry and sediment trap observations between 2003 and 2012 at Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP) sustained observatory in the Northeast Atlantic. The time series is valuable as it allows for investigation of the link between surface productivity and deep ocean carbon flux. The region is a perennial sink for CO2, with an average uptake of around 1.5 mmol m?2 day?1. The average monthly drawdowns of inorganic carbon and nitrogen were used to quantify the net community production (NCP) and new production. Seasonal NCP and new production were found to be 4.57 ± 0.85 mol C m?2 and 0.37 ± 0.14 mol N m?2, respectively. The C : N ratio was high (12) compared to the Redfield ratio (6.6), and the production calculated from carbon was higher than production calculated from nitrogen, which is indicative of carbon overconsumption. The export ratio and transfer efficiency were 16 and 4 %, respectively, and the site thereby showed high flux attenuation. Particle tracking was used to examine the source region of material in the sediment trap, and there was large variation in source regions, both between and within years. There were higher correlations between surface productivity and export flux when using the particle-tracking approach, than by comparing with the mean productivity in a 100 km box around the PAP site. However, the differences in correlation coefficients were not significant, and a longer time series is needed to draw conclusions on applying particle tracking in sediment trap analyses

Aging and Immortality in a Cell Proliferation Model

We investigate a model of cell division in which the length of telomeres within the cell regulate their proliferative potential. At each cell division the ends of linear chromosomes change and a cell becomes senescent when one or more of its telomeres become shorter than a critical length. In addition to this systematic shortening, exchange of telomere DNA between the two daughter cells can occur at each cell division. We map this telomere dynamics onto a biased branching diffusion process with an absorbing boundary condition whenever any telomere reaches the critical length. As the relative effects of telomere shortening and cell division are varied, there is a phase transition between finite lifetime and infinite proliferation of the cell population. Using simple first-passage ideas, we quantify the nature of this transition.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 2-column revtex4 format; version 2: final published form; contains various improvements in response to referee comment

Climate change threatens the world's marine protected areas

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a primary management tool for mitigating threats to marine biodiversity 1,2 . MPAs and the species they protect, however, are increasingly being impacted by climate change. Here we show that, despite local protections, the warming associated with continued business-as-usual emissions (RCP8.5) 3 will likely result in further habitat and species losses throughout low-latitude and tropical MPAs 4,5 . With continued business-as-usual emissions, mean sea-surface temperatures within MPAs are projected to increase 0.035 °C per year and warm an additional 2.8 °C by 2100. Under these conditions, the time of emergence (the year when sea-surface temperature and oxygen concentration exceed natural variability) is mid-century in 42% of 309 no-take marine reserves. Moreover, projected warming rates and the existing 'community thermal safety margin' (the inherent buffer against warming based on the thermal sensitivity of constituent species) both vary among ecoregions and with latitude. The community thermal safety margin will be exceeded by 2050 in the tropics and by 2150 for many higher latitude MPAs. Importantly, the spatial distribution of emergence is stressor-specific. Hence, rearranging MPAs to minimize exposure to one stressor could well increase exposure to another. Continued business-as-usual emissions will likely disrupt many marine ecosystems, reducing the benefits of MPAs

Nonparametric nonlinear model predictive control

Model Predictive Control (MPC) has recently found wide acceptance in industrial applications, but its potential has been much impeded by linear models due to the lack of a similarly accepted nonlinear modeling or databased technique. Aimed at solving this problem, the paper addresses three issues: (i) extending second-order Volterra nonlinear MPC (NMPC) to higher-order for improved prediction and control; (ii) formulating NMPC directly with plant data without needing for parametric modeling, which has hindered the progress of NMPC; and (iii) incorporating an error estimator directly in the formulation and hence eliminating the need for a nonlinear state observer. Following analysis of NMPC objectives and existing solutions, nonparametric NMPC is derived in discrete-time using multidimensional convolution between plant data and Volterra kernel measurements. This approach is validated against the benchmark van de Vusse nonlinear process control problem and is applied to an industrial polymerization process by using Volterra kernels of up to the third order. Results show that the nonparametric approach is very efficient and effective and considerably outperforms existing methods, while retaining the original data-based spirit and characteristics of linear MPC

Suspended particles are hotspots of microbial remineralization in the ocean's twilight zone

The sinking of photosynthetically produced organic carbon from the ocean surface to its interior is a significant term in the global carbon cycle. Most sinking organic carbon is, however, remineralized in the mesopelagic zone (∼100 m–1000 m), thereby exerting control over ocean-atmosphere carbon dioxide (CO2) partitioning and hence global climate. Sinking particles are considered hotspots of microbial respiration in the dark ocean. However, our observations in the contrasting Scotia Sea and the Benguela Current show that >90% of microbial remineralisation is associated with suspended, rather than sinking, organic matter, resulting in rapid turnover of the suspended carbon pool and demonstrating its central role in mesopelagic carbon cycling. A non-steady-state model indicates that temporally variable particle fluxes, particle injection pumps and local chemoautotrophy are necessary to help balance the observed mesopelagic respiration. Temperature and oxygen exert control over microbial respiration, particularly for the suspended fraction, further demonstrating the susceptibility of microbial remineralisation to the ongoing decline in oxygen at mid-ocean depths. These observations suggest a partial decoupling of carbon cycling between non-sinking and fast-sinking organic matter, challenging our understanding of how oceanic biological processes regulate climate

Maintenance Therapy With Tumor-Treating Fields Plus Temozolomide vs Temozolomide Alone for Glioblastoma: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

IMPORTANCE: Glioblastoma is the most devastating primary malignancy of the central nervous system in adults. Most patients die within 1 to 2 years of diagnosis. Tumor-treating fields (TTFields) are a locoregionally delivered antimitotic treatment that interferes with cell division and organelle assembly. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of TTFields used in combination with temozolomide maintenance treatment after chemoradiation therapy for patients with glioblastoma. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: After completion of chemoradiotherapy, patients with glioblastoma were randomized (2:1) to receive maintenance treatment with either TTFields plus temozolomide (n = 466) or temozolomide alone (n = 229) (median time from diagnosis to randomization, 3.8 months in both groups). The study enrolled 695 of the planned 700 patients between July 2009 and November 2014 at 83 centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, and South Korea. The trial was terminated based on the results of this planned interim analysis. INTERVENTIONS: Treatment with TTFields was delivered continuously (>18 hours/day) via 4 transducer arrays placed on the shaved scalp and connected to a portable medical device. Temozolomide (150-200 mg/m2/d) was given for 5 days of each 28-day cycle. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: The primary end point was progression-free survival in the intent-to-treat population (significance threshold of .01) with overall survival in the per-protocol population (n = 280) as a powered secondary end point (significance threshold of .006). This prespecified interim analysis was to be conducted on the first 315 patients after at least 18 months of follow-up. RESULTS: The interim analysis included 210 patients randomized to TTFields plus temozolomide and 105 randomized to temozolomide alone, and was conducted at a median follow-up of 38 months (range, 18-60 months). Median progression-free survival in the intent-to-treat population was 7.1 months (95% CI, 5.9-8.2 months) in the TTFields plus temozolomide group and 4.0 months (95% CI, 3.3-5.2 months) in the temozolomide alone group (hazard ratio [HR], 0.62 [98.7% CI, 0.43-0.89]; P = .001). Median overall survival in the per-protocol population was 20.5 months (95% CI, 16.7-25.0 months) in the TTFields plus temozolomide group (n = 196) and 15.6 months (95% CI, 13.3-19.1 months) in the temozolomide alone group (n = 84) (HR, 0.64 [99.4% CI, 0.42-0.98]; P = .004). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this interim analysis of 315 patients with glioblastoma who had completed standard chemoradiation therapy, adding TTFields to maintenance temozolomide chemotherapy significantly prolonged progression-free and overall survival. TRIAL REGISTRATION: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00916409

From global to regional and back again: common climate stressors of marine ecosystems relevant for adaptation across five ocean warming hotspots

Ocean warming ‘hotspots’ are regions characterized by above-average temperature increases over recent years, for which there are significant consequences for both living marine resources and the societies that depend on them. As such, they represent early warning systems for understanding the impacts of marine climate change, and test-beds for developing adaptation options for coping with those impacts. Here, we examine five hotspots off the coasts of eastern Australia, South Africa, Madagascar, India and Brazil. These particular hotspots have underpinned a large international partnership that is working towards improving community adaptation by characterizing, assessing and projecting the likely future of coastal-marine food resources through the provision and sharing of knowledge. To inform this effort, we employ a high-resolution global ocean model forced by Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 and simulated to year 2099. In addition to the sea surface temperature, we analyse projected stratification, nutrient supply, primary production, anthropogenic CO2-driven ocean acidification, deoxygenation and ocean circulation. Our simulation finds that the temperature-defined hotspots studied here will continue to experience warming but, with the exception of eastern Australia, may not remain the fastest warming ocean areas over the next century as the strongest warming is projected to occur in the subpolar and polar areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Additionally, we find that recent rapid change in SST is not necessarily an indicator that these areas are also hotspots of the other climatic stressors examined. However, a consistent facet of the hotspots studied here is that they are all strongly influenced by ocean circulation, which has already shown changes in the recent past and is projected to undergo further strong change into the future. In addition to the fast warming, change in local ocean circulation represents a distinct feature of present and future climate change impacting marine ecosystems in these areas

Vertical imbalance in organic carbon budgets is indicative of a missing vertical transfer during a phytoplankton bloom near South Georgia (COMICS)

The biological carbon pump, driven principally by surface production and sinking of organic matter to deep water and its subsequent remineralization to CO2 maintains atmospheric CO2 around 200 ppm lower than it would be if the ocean were abiotic. One important driver of the magnitude of this effect is the depth to which organic matter sinks before it is remineralised, a parameter we have limited confidence in measuring given the difficulty involved in balancing sources and sinks in the ocean's interior. This imbalance is due, in part, to our inability to measure respiration directly and our reliance on radiotracer-based proxies. One solution to these problems might be a temporal offset in which organic carbon accumulates in the mesopelagic zone (100–1000 m depth) early in the productive season prior to it being consumed later, a situation which could lead to a net apparent sink occurring if a steady state assumption is applied as is often the approach. In this work, we develop a novel accounting method to address this issue, independent of respiration measurements, by estimating fluxes into and accumulation within distinct vertical layers in the mesopelagic. We apply this approach to a time series of measurements of particle sinking velocities and interior organic carbon concentrations made during the declining phase of a large diatom bloom in a low-circulation region of the Southern Ocean downstream of South Georgia. Our data show that the major export event led to a significant accumulation of organic matter in the upper mesopelagic (100–200 m depth) which declined over several weeks, implying that temporal offsets need to be considered when compiling budgets. However, even when accounting for this accumulation, a mismatch in the vertically resolved organic carbon budget remained, implying that there are likely widespread processes that we do not yet understand that redistribute material vertically in the mesopelagic

Voiceless but empowered farmers in corporate supply chains: contradictory imagery and instrumental approach to empowerment

There have been calls for a shift of focus towards the political and power-laden aspects of transitioning towards socially equitable global supply chains. This paper offers an empirically grounded response to these calls from a critical realist stance in the context of global food supply chains. We examine how an imaginary for sustainable farming structured around an instrumental construction of empowerment limits what is viewed as permissible, desirable and possible in global food supply chains. We adopt a multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the sustainable farming imaginary for smallholder farmers constructed by one large organization, Unilever, in a series of videos produced and disseminated on YouTube. We expose the underlying mechanisms of power and marginalization at work within the sustainability imaginary and show how “empowerment” has the potential to create of new dependencies for these farmers. We recontextualize the representations to show that while the imaginary may be commercially feasible, it is less achievable in terms of empowering smallholder farmers